We are delighted to announce that Emory & Henry College has joined the PebblePad community. We are very proud to be working with one of North America's leading Liberal Arts Colleges in a collaboration which will see the college take its thriving eportfolio culture to the next level.

Joseph Vess, Ampersand Advisor and Programs Coordinator, Emory & Henry College, said of the new partnership:

“We are very excited about working with PebblePad to move our ePortfolio practice to the next level, as well as exploring other ways to innovate. Pedagogically we have a strong and thriving ePortfolio culture, and now we finally have the technology to support it, and help our faculty do what they want to do.”

We are excited to announce that we will be hosting an expert-led symposium aimed at sparking discussion around the planning, implementation, and delivery of degree apprenticeships. The event will cover employer-engagement, supporting remote learning, and ideas on how to shape an organisation’s technology armoury to manage competency frameworks and external assessment.

With demand for degree apprenticeships expected to be high, many higher education institutions in the UK are in the process of assessing their readiness to address the challenges of degree apprenticeship delivery. That’s why we think this event should be marked in indelible ink in the calendars of anyone involved in supporting degree apprenticeships, end point assessment (including the role of eportfolio) and for those involved in all things strategy and vision in the context of degree apprenticeships.

The symposium includes speakers from JISC, University of Birmingham, Northumbria University and the University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC).

Organisation-wide eportfolio implementation - a fantastic guest post by Heidi C. Blair, Ph.D. and Megan Duffy from Griffith University, written in the universal language of food.

Like many other higher education institutions, Griffith University (Queensland, Australia), had been looking for an eportfolio platform for its 55,000 staff and students. Across its four academic groups - Arts, Education & Law, Griffith Business, Griffith Health, and Griffith Sciences – academics were asking for a platform to suit a variety of tastes. The University had an appetite for purchasing an eportfolio solution that it could implement and support for all. In late 2016 the university determined that PebblePad was the right technology for the job. Fast forward to August 2017, and the university has a successful enterprise-wide implementation, working collaboratively across departments and academic groups.

Well, our list of internal blog authors has yet again been incremented by a count of one as we welcome James Blackburn to the PebblePad gang. Affectionately known as James Blackburn Rovers within the team (well, at least by those who follow football or soccer) we are delighted to have him on board. James, who famously once wore a hula skirt in a PebblePad workshop whilst still with the Institute of Swimming (though none of us can remember exactly why) has authored a very personal blog post, reaffirming why he's such a great catch for PebblePad (despite showing questionable judgement when it comes to appropriate workshop attire).

Having ventured to both D2L Fusion '17 and InstructureCon '17, Chief Mischief Maker at PebblePad, Shane Sutherland, and PebblePad Director of North American Operations, Holly Lewis, reflect on the big takeaways from the big LMS conferences. Read their blog post and discover why our PebblePad duo believe personalized learning and eportfolio is becoming increasingly important as we shift from a learning culture of knowing what to knowing why.

In mid-July, 2017, PebblePad were Gold sponsors of the 2017 Australian New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators (ANZAHPE) annual conference. Held in Adelaide, South Australia, on the banks of the Torrens River, it was a fabulous opportunity to engage with health professional educators, learn more about their research and practice, and understand the current challenges in their field. While the delegates came from a wide range of health disciplines, it was interesting to note the many commonalities in the challenges that were discussed. For more information on key themes we took away from ANZAHPE 2017 and our reflections on their relevance to PebblePad and eportfolio practice - read our ANZAHPE blog post.

Here at PebblePad, we're very excited. This in itself isn't all that unusual as there's normally always something to be excited about when you're closely involved with PebblePad. But we're even more excited than usual. Why? Well, because Melissa Shaquid Pirie Cross has joined the PebblePad team from Portland State University.

Melissa's inaugural PebblePad blog post, in which she reflects on an enviable career, looks ahead to the future of higher education and lets us know what she's most looking forward to about her PebblePad journey, makes for a terrific read. And if that's not enough to pique your interest, she also lifts the lid on why she feels the aptest title for her new PebblePad business card is 'The Fixer'. Read Melissa's blog here

For us, here at PebblePad, the ultimate reward of student-centredness is learner autonomy and independence, and increasingly these key attributes are accelerated through learning experiences beyond the classroom, on internships, study abroad, community projects, student awards and many other co- and extra-curricula activities. Yet, whilst student-centred learning is clearly the long-term goal of many universities across the globe, delivering on this ambition can present a number of challenges. Our new free guide discusses 5 of the key challenges along with ideas on how to overcome them.